Knee Health
 

Ok. Since I Do not ride track, I had a question that a ssfg regular told me to post here.

Ive noticed that many of the SSFG riders generally advise riders to go for gear ratios that have gear inches in the 60s and 50s. For a few months I pushed 48/15 ( i think thats about 84 gear inches) daily and really got used to it.

But someone on the ssfg said that I should gear down and learn to spin, which I did. I geared down to a 48/17.

However, I realized that true track racers run much higher gear ratios, and have to spin them at much higher speeds. What do you guys do to lessen the impact on your knees? What makes you able to push such high gear ratios and spin them at much higher rates, while still maintaining knee health, as opposed to say someone who rides fixed (even SS) in a lesser but still generally high gear ratio?

Do you have exercises designed specifically to improve knee strength? To prepare the knee for pushing such high ratios?
Or is it nothing to do with exercises at all, and more to do with the environment that the bike is ridden in?

Thanks guys. Vixtor told me that Carleton and Tejano might hop in on this.

- This was a child-thread of someone on the FG forum asking about gearing down from 48/17 to 48/19 for street use.

http://getbuffblog.com/wp-content/up...9/02/squat.jpg



Most knee problems for street fixed gear riders comes from a mixture of:
- skidding
- braking
- not properly warming up
- poor bike fit
- lack of strength training

Ahhh. I see.
Do track racers not provide resistance when finishing a race (back pedaling, but not skidding obviously) and let frictio between the wheels and the track slow them down naturally?

Thanks btw Carleton. That was simple explanation.

When a race is finished and it's time to exit the track, initially we just relax our legs and let wind resistance slow us down to maybe 15mph, and then exit onto the apron of the track and lightly back pedal until we are going slow enough to enter the infield and come to a stop. You do need to backpedal to stop, but not so hard that you are likely to strain anything. On a few occasions when the track is very busy, I've found it necessary to backpedal hard to slow down quickly, but never to the point of skidding.

Also on the subject of gym training to strengthen knees for running bigger gears, especially doing standing starts in bigger gears, I have switched to seated leg presses rather than squats due to problems with my lower back. Most of my gym work focuses on core muscles and upper body (arms). I also do leg curls to strengthen my hamstrings, which are inherently fragile muscles that are prone to injury, as well as lunges. Now that I'm within 2 months of my national championships, my gym work is very light maintenace work, and I'm visiting the track 3 times per week to do hard workouts and work on my speed with some motor pacing. Something else you might consider is doing stretching exercises as part of your warmup before riding if you are going to use higher gearing. On the track we always warm up first on a (relatively) lower gear than our race/workout gear and stretch after the warmup and before changing to the higher gear.

Ahhhhh I see. Thanks. Btw, when starting off from a standing start, (Ive never had the opportunity to have someone help me with pedal technique and have heard lots of different things from youtube-experts) do you engage the bag foot by pulling up on the pedal in addition to engaging the front foot to exert downward pressure?

Ive heard a few times that you should try to "throw" your knee over the handlebars XD and exerting downward pressure on the pedal is natrual.

Thinking about pulling up is essential on every stroke. Pushing is pretty automatic. I practice this on the road by climbing out of the saddle and consciously pulling up on each leg. Gravity pushes you down naturally but you must work against gravity on the upstroke. Also, your legs are stronger pushing than pulling, so it takes a lot of work to improve the pulling part of the pedal stroke. Pulling is also essential to attain a higher cadence when sprinting. Finally, upper body strength is very important in standing starts, such that your arms must react at the handlebars to transfer all the motive force back to the rear wheel, instead of being lost in body movement.

Wow. Sounds like Ive got some work to do.... -.-
I actually thought I had remembered reading in one of the bicycling magazines that the pull muscles are stronger than teh push, but its not aerobically advantageous.....idk. But Ill take YOUR word for it =].

Deeeng. I have hella work to do.

Thanks a lot for your help Tejano. I do remember you saying that 50/15 was a ratio used often by track racers? Thats really close to a lot of the stock ratios coming off of the BD bikes. Just an observation. I THINK thats what you said on the SSFG forum on the thread that someone posted regarding ratios lol.

In any case, is there a point at which you pedal so fast that momentum actually takes over the pull force of the back foot? Or are track racers trained enough so that even at high cadences, their muscles fire at just the right moment that they can still exert pulling and pushing forces simultatenously?

And as to your upper body strength: Is the trasnfer to the back wheel (the force) require a very "quiet" upperbody? Is that what the strength is for? To keep the upper body as motionless as possible? Or is there somerthing that you do with your upperbody specifically that trasnfers this power? Becasue I notice that (well maybe not sprinters) racers (primarily TTs) keep an extremely quiet upper body. Sprinters, I have not watched enough of them. But from what I have watched, the only significant upper body movement is the arms when the bike is rockin from side to side during a very hard sprint.

Attaining a higher cadence in a race gear is achieved by working out with lower gears with less resistance, and turning a higher cadence. Keirin racers warm up before races on rollers, which have virtually no resistance, and can spin the cranks well over 200 rpm. Today I did a workout at the track, and started out with 45 x 16 and then flipped my wheel and completed the workout with a 45 x 14.

As to the importance of upper body strength, think of your body as part of the bicycle. Just as you don't want power loss due to flexing of the bicycle frame, you don't want your upper body to flex because you won't get full transfer of power into the cranks. Also, good sprinters don't rock their bikes a lot, because that also wastes energy. The reason you see some road racers throwing their bikes around during sprints is that they are trying to push outrageous gears, and they are actually going slower than they would if they used a lower gear at a higher cadence.

Here, watch some track sprinting:

http://www.youtube.com/user/JensFiedler

Dang. Thats cool.

Those frames looked like pursuit frames to. Like wtf lol. Are those banned from UCI/Olympic track racing? Forward down sloping top tubes?

In any case, they looked hella in the zone. Nice vid thanks!

@Tejano, thanks for clearing that up. Again, very very useful information =]

That guy has tons of sprint videos on his channel. Keep watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWHjg7iBp98

He was going 40mph + at the finish!